The Hawai'i High School Athletic Association's executive board has called a special meeting for tomorrow to "revisit" last month's controversial vote that reduced the Division I state tournament fields for softball and girls basketball from 12 teams to eight.

The vote, which also increased the Division II fields in those tournaments from four to eight, drew criticism from some athletic directors who questioned why a compromise amendment was defeated. The amendment, which would have kept the DI tournaments at 12 teams each and increased the DII fields to six teams each, was drawn up for the June 14 executive board meeting and lost by a 3-2 vote.

"From what I gather, there was confusion on the issue (afterward)," said board president Tony Ramos, the retired principal at Kamehameha Schools. "Three leagues requested a special meeting, and under the bylaws that's enough for a meeting to be called."

The board is made up of representatives from each of the state's five high school leagues. Only the Big Island Interscholastic Federation and Maui Interscholastic League voted in favor of the amendment, even though the Interscholastic League of Honolulu stood to lose the most from the changes since it probably would have only one team qualify for the DI girls basketball state tournament as opposed to two or three as in past years.

"There's been a lot of discussion (in the ILH), and I think I can safely say the amendment passes this time," said Iolani co-athletic director Carl Schroers.

The O'ahu Interscholastic Association drafted a proposal last year to tie the softball and girls basketball state tournament sizes to the proportion of teams playing in each division statewide.

It reasoned that Division I tournaments for those sports had 12 teams each and the Division II tournaments four each, even though the ratio of DI teams to DII was not 3 to 1 in either sport.

The OIA's proposal was tabled at the 2004 Hawai'i Interscholastic Athletic Directors Association conference and an ad hoc committee made up of one principal and one athletic director from each of the five leagues was formed to research the issue during the 2005 sports season. OIA executive secretary Dwight Toyama said the committee's recommendation was 10-0 in favor of restructuring the tournaments. The measure then made it out of last month's HIADA conference committee and won by a 60-22 vote at the HIADA general assembly, which included 82 of the 89 HHSAA member schools.

However, HHSAA executive director Keith Amemiya said the impact of reducing the number of DI teams was never discussed at the HIADA conference, and the aforementioned amendment was not presented as an option until the executive board meeting.

"I think that added to the confusion," Schroers said.

Toyama said yesterday his league is "in the dark" about tomorrow's meeting and he did not speculate on what might happen.

Ramos, whose term was supposed to have ended June 30, said the meeting's main purpose is to "revisit the amendment."

"We have unfinished business," he said.